Beetlejuice (1988)

“For all the film’s popped eyeballs and severed limbs, Beetlejuice retains an innocence that makes the grotesque humor very appealing. Burton has captured the sweet ghoulishness of a 12-year-old pouring over horror comics, dreaming of the greatest Halloween costume ever invented.” — Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune

SYNOPSIS

Tim Burton’s gleefully macabre breakthrough turns the traditional haunted-house movie inside out by making the ghosts its beleaguered heroes and the living the unwanted intruders. Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin star as Barbara and Adam Maitland, a recently deceased couple condemned to haunt their idyllic Connecticut home after an obnoxious new family moves in and begins redecorating it beyond recognition. Desperate to reclaim their house, the Maitlands enlist the services of Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), a grotesque, fast-talking “bio-exorcist” whose methods prove considerably more dangerous than advertised. Burton fills the afterlife with crooked architecture, grotesque creatures, stop-motion effects, and bureaucratic absurdity, establishing the playful collision of Gothic horror and cartoon surrealism that would become his signature. Powered by Danny Elfman’s exuberant score and Keaton’s anarchic performance, Beetlejuice is a delirious funhouse of the morbid and the mischievous, where death is merely the beginning of the weirdness.